CCMusic.com

The London Choral Sinfonia and director Michael Waldron are joined for their latest recording by baritone Roderick Williams, tenor Andrew Staples and violinist Elena Urioste. The album opens with the Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams. These hypnotically beautiful songs are staples of the repertoire but have never before been recorded in this version for voice, choir, piano and strings - an arrangement made by Vaughan Williams himself. Roderick Williams, indisputably one of the finest baritones in the world, delivers a mesmerizing interpretation on this recording. Tenor Andrew Staples beguiles in his performance of Lennox Berkeley's Variations on a Hymn by Orlando Gibbons, also never recorded before. First performed at the Aldeburgh Festival almost exactly 70 years ago, this piece may have been a secret love letter to Britten, who thought the work a "lovely piece". The album is completed by the first new recording of Warlock's Capriol Suite in some time, and by star violinist Elena Urioste - known to Orchid listeners from The Jukebox Album - performing an exquisite arrangement of Vaughan Williams's ethereal masterpiece The Lark Ascending.